Disney with Hulu. HBO Max with Paramount. It seems inevitable that to stream, we’ll pay for more complicated combinations of services.
It’s gotten very confusing. Someone will ask if I’ve seen some show or other, and I’ll ask what it’s streaming on. Often they don’t know.
It’s expensive, also.
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I subscribe to YouTube for television and right now I am without ABC and ESPN thanks to their dispute with Disney. ABC is my local news. I canceled Disney and MAX until there are programs on that I want to watch. It is expensive. I just canceled several automatic renewals.
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Streaming was once a solution (from cable) now it feels like a racket.
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I just have AmazonPrime and a free subscription for a brief free trial of AppleTV with TMobile as well as Chase Sapphire Reserve. We rarely watch anything, so that’s more than adequate for our needs.
The first article says customers will still have the ability to purchase standalone Hulu and standalone Disney. This makes it sound like the following. The new model does not sound more complicated than current to me.
Current – Options include Hulu alone, Disney alone, or Hulu+Disney Bundle
Future – Options include Hulu alone, Disney alone, or combined Hulu/Disney
The Paramount / HBO Max merger is far from a sure thing. It appears that all the news stories are based on the same original article, which references an unnamed person saying Ellison’s plan would absorb HBO Max content in to Paramount, if Paramount does end up purchasing WB (HBO Max is an asset of WB).
While I don’t see a big change in complexity of streaming services combinations on the horizon, I do agree that many people find current streaming complicated, with the large number of available streaming services and the shows they want to watch often being split across several different streaming services, and sometimes switching back and forth among different streaming services.
I’ve had a different reaction and have been happy to “cut the cord” and switch from cable to streaming. I like having the option to purchase limited content at a lower price from a single steaming service that has the particular shows that most interest me, rather than being forced to use the traditional cable model where one pays a tremendously larger price for the ability to flip through a large number of live channels, most of which have zero interest for me.
Rather than trying to navigate through subscribing to a large number of different streaming services and figure out which show is on which service, I rarely subscribe to more than 2 streaming services at a time. If I’ve caught up on the shows/movies that interest me from those 1-2 services, then I’ll rotate to a different one and catch up on my series on that service.
I’m currently paying $1/month for streaming. The $1/month is Hulu Black Friday 2024. I also get Peacock as part of my Instacart membership. The Instacart membership was $20/year and included a coupon valued at >$20 off first grocery order, so Peacock is essentially free. At other times over the past couple years I’ve also had subscriptions to Netflix, Paramount, Amazon, HBO Max, Apple, Starz, MGM (only for the show From), and Crunchyroll… catching up on new seasons of shows I watch on those services. I’ve never paid more than $6/month in total.
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Our charter cable subscription now includes several streaming channels. It’s not cheap but since it includes almost everything, I guess it’s easy.
The only extra we pay for is Amazon. Which we didn’t until Amazon kicked us off our kids account.
We are finding a lot to watch on Amazon so that’s a bonus. I only subscribed because I apparently cannot live without ordering copious quantities of 
from Amazon
Charter is still including ESPN so I guess we are one up over YouTube
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Hulu live. It’s getting expensive but great for sport’s. Have Amazon and Netflix. My wife watches a lot of shows. But yea everything is going subscription. Chicago Cubs, Bulls and Blackhawks. It totally sucks. There are other ways to watch what I want and I will leave it right there.
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I think they really get you on the sports. If you follow a team or a sport and want to see everything, they can usually get you to pay up for that.
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It does get confusing. And sometimes shows are on multiple channels. I keep the JustWatch app on my phone. It shows which services have a show (though not 100% accurate). If I’m out and somebody makes a recommendation , I do Search… if one of our services, I put add to a list (movies or TV). Then when looking for something new to watch, I check the lists. It took a while to get used to using it, but very helpful.
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Yep but I won’t. Problem is all of the sudden the Bulls are playing great. 
… Lol.
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Thanks so much for the tip! I loathe how everything is on a different platform. Usually I google the series/tv name and streaming and it will comes up. This will probably be easier.
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We have a Roku TV and it has a search function built in. I use it all the time because I can never remember if something is on Netflix or Apple TV or wherever. It will pop up with all the places you can watch it including things you aren’t subscribed to and will offer you a subscription or let you rent it from Amazon or whatever.
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I have a piece of paper where I write shows I want to watch, streaming service and what day new episodes drop. A personalized old school TV Guide 
.
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I keep a Reminders list of all the shows and movies I want to watch with a hashtag of the service they are on. That allows me to group them by service if we want to suspend one for awhile or make the most of a free trial. I also flag the ones we are currently watching as sometimes we have so many things going on so many services it’s easy to forget and just stop midway through a series. I also flag in another color if we’ve completed a series but there is another season coming out so that we don’t forget to watch it.
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